Throughout the semester, the topic of my blog and the way I planned to structure my research paper changed drastically. I first was going to use examples of famous people who defy the normal stereotypes laid upon them. I believed that this would have helped the reader relate to the topic, as well as get an insight into the purpose of my overall thesis. But as time went by the topic of my blog shifted towards the scientific aspect of stereotype, and how nurture and nature affect the way we stenotype individuals. At the end, my research paper was half about the problems that stereotype causes, such as being ignorant to the different cultures we interact with every day, and half about a solution. The solution was based on the education system and curriculum not evolving even after we have evolved with new technology that connects us to the world and different cultures. The main issue in my paper was that the curriculum should entail information about the world instead of just about the culture of America.

In class I learned to incorporate a contradictory point in my essay, and proving it wrong. This not only helps add information to the paper, but it helped make my point a lot more strong. At first it was hard to do so, because my adding a point that goes against my thesis I felt as if I was tearing down my point. Yet through our discussions in class, I was able to write a paragraph in my paper about the common misconception and concern the reader might have with my solution, and use it to prove that my thesis was correct, and my solution should be implemented.

While writing the blogs and my final paper, I learned that there are different ways I can fight out a point, and make my thesis stronger. For some reason I always believed there was a certain format I had to use for my papers in order to prove my point, yet with the openness and the freedom that this paper gave us, i was able to explore different writing methods, and different ways of strengthening my thesis. I related most to the lesson on counter arguments. For some reason I had never thought that a point arguing against my thesis would actually help me make my thesis stronger. It was something new I had learned, and I actually enjoyed writing my counter argument.

As college decisions started rolling out last year, it almost became a mutual understanding between the seniors and the teachers that the course load would have to get a lot more lenient. Most of the seniors where going through a serious case of seniorities, this is when my English teacher decided to put on a Ted talk every day of class.

The day we watched The Dangers of A Single Story, by Chimamanda Adichie, her talk and ideas seem to bubble up in me.

All I could think about was how easily I could relate to her talk. Since that day, I have somehow tried to relate things that I learn, and put it into a different prospective. When I decided to write a paper about the curriculum we have in school that doesn’t teach students enough about the different cultures and lifestyles that people have all over the world, I used Adichie’s talk as the bases and then connected It to the main place students learn from. I started to conduct my research a couple of weeks after we were assigned our paper, but stereotype is such a vast topic, that every time I went back to look into it, I found different perspectives. After coming to college I could relate to different people even better, because the Ted talk had opened my mind to a new way of thinking. Throughout the whole process I had a small problem converting my topic into a argument based research because I couldn’t find a reasonable enough solution, yet I found one, but I changed my paper to be half, a problem based and argument based paper. While I was trying to find a solution to stereotype, I learned that we could change the way we learn about the world without traveling. The solution I found to stereotype had never crossed my mind, and now that I know there is a tangible solution, it makes me want to get out there and change the way we teach students.